


put me in the dirt, let me be with the stars

by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Series: of quiet birds in circled flight [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Robin (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: (but it's temporary), Angst, Attempted Murder, Batfamily Dynamics (DCU), Batkids Age Reversal, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, But the others were never called Robin and it's important to me that you know that, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Damian Wayne is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is Bad at Feelings, Dick Grayson is Not Okay, Dick Grayson is Robin, Dick Grayson is a murder baby, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Robin!Dick, F/M, Good Sibling Cassandra Cain, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Morally Ambiguous Dick Grayson, Mute Dick Grayson, Muteness, Only half beta we die like Dick's mental health because he watched his parents die and felt it oops, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Slash, Psychological Trauma, References to Depression, Romani Dick Grayson, Synesthesia, The Flying Graysons - Freeform, as fluffy as AK gets okay, fluff-ish, for once, mirror-touch synesthesia, practically Dick Whump up in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28251558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds
Summary: “Are you okay?” the man asks, eyes like a calm ocean he can slip into, lose himself in, without drowning.Dick’s knees are bloody with their ruins, hands scraped with wood from that ladder he’d climbed down too fast to care. The man doesn’t seem to care about that, despite the three-piece suit and expensive cologne, despite the wealth Dick can practically taste in his presence. He seems…concerned, gentle, caring.He doesn’t look at the bodies, he sees beyond them. He looks at what the bodies left behind.***Tragedy has a tendency of bringing people together. Especially in Gotham.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Cassandra Cain, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Jonathan Kent/Damian Wayne, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne
Series: of quiet birds in circled flight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072991
Comments: 27
Kudos: 210





	put me in the dirt, let me be with the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epistemology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistemology/gifts).



> Verse notes + translations in the end notes!
> 
> Epi,  
> My dear, my love, my friend. I really really really wanted to create something that shows you how much you mean to me and how much I treasure our friendship. This mess is what my brain came up with, and all I can promise is more JayDick in the sequels. I really hope you like this because you deserve the best and you've made my life a hell of a lot better just by being in it. Love you bunches <3
> 
> Big thanks to crow for cheerleading and looking it over to make sure it didn't flow like me attempting to do the worm (that is, not at all). I owe you lots of thanks and love for listening to my rambles and reading this mess <3
> 
> ALSO ALSO
> 
> lots of love to the whole rat pack in general. Lu, Q, Mori, you guys have just been the best friends ever for the short time I've known you. You listen to my rants, don't make me shut up about Batman Reborn, and are there for me in a way not many people are. I hope that you guys have the best holidays ever too, and that you also enjoy this mess curated specifically for epi, but generally for all of you. <3

* * *

**SPRING**

_April is the cruelest month, breeding_  
_Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing_  
_Memory and desire, stirring_  
_Dull roots with spring rain._

_-_ T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land_

* * *

Reciprocity is the axis Dick Grayson’s world spins on from birth; a celestial right inexplicably weaved into the very fabric of his existence, dusted in starlight of love and care. His Dya tells him his heart’s so big that he feels the world in it, that every mark he leaves on others leaves a mark on him too, one only he can know. She never makes him feel different for the warm tingles along his cheek when he presses a kiss to hers, never alienates him when he looks too hard at an injured troupe member, and feels a responding ache in sympathy.

“ _A gift_ , _my lólodúianchír_ ,” Dya tells him, smile wide and glimmering with a cheap lip gloss he’d bought for her birthday in a small village outside Munich. “ _Il n’y a pas plus sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre. You see and hear far better than most.”_

It’s her warmth that comforts him when the sensations overwhelm him, when he needs to climb as high as he can on whatever trees are nearby until the clean air and sunshine drown out the rest of the world, until his skin doesn’t carry traces of everyone around him in a way that can be painfully intense. What he sees, he feels.

Dya’s eyes beg him to look away when she falls, the taste of his name on her lips – _Dick!_ – but he doesn’t. He can’t. He watches Dat and Dya slip from the air to the ground by gravity’s cruel pull, watches their throats open and let loose a litany of screams he feels build in his throat, watches their hearts palpitate with fear and adrenaline as his races too, watches their bodies break and spill and crack like inkwells thrown against concrete as his own body aches similarly.

As Dick watches their orchestrated murder in real-time, high up on the pedestal board with his hand still outstretched towards Dya, he breaks like the mirrored reflection of breakage. He feels it, senses it, _is_ it, but the break is entirely internal and separate from the rest of the world. No one sees the cracks in him, the _breaks_ in him and blood surrounding him, sticky against his costume, and he doesn’t expect them to.

But someone _does_. Someone _sees_ him, sees all the bottled pain and battered flesh and shattered bones covered in blood, the screams lumped in his throat unanswered, and cares.

“Are you okay?” the man asks, eyes like a calm ocean he can slip into, lose himself in, without drowning.

Dick’s knees are bloody with their ruins, hands scraped with wood from that ladder he’d climbed down too fast to care. The man doesn’t seem to care about that, despite the three-piece suit and expensive cologne, despite the wealth Dick can practically taste in his presence. He seems…concerned, gentle, caring.

He doesn’t look at the bodies, he sees beyond them. He looks at what the bodies left behind.

“T-they…they were…” Dick says, shaking, eyes still wide as he sees their remnants covered in cloth. Bruce Wayne’s hand is warm and calloused when it meets his shoulder – a grounding presence. Unlike Haly, he seems to understand Dick’s need to _look_ , to _feel_ , and doesn’t bother with pleas for him to look away. He knows Dick won’t. “Zucco… _Zucco_ …”

“Father,” a man says from behind Dick, voice deep and annoyed. “What are you—?"

Dick and Bruce both turn, Bruce’s hand still heavy on his shoulder, Dick still shaking with those borrowed sensations spiraling internally, reverberating through every bone on a cellular level. Bruce’s son is taller than Bruce by a few inches, with jade green eyes and sharp cheekbones. His skin is an olive shade that’s darker than Bruce’s but lighter than Dick’s.

“Another orphan?” he asks dryly, something a bit like resentment flickering in his eyes. Dick glares at him, nearly snarling at his indifference to the end of Dick’s… _everything_ , the complete obliteration of what he’s always known and loved (coupled with those aches, their deaths, set heavy on his chest as though he’s carrying his own death, because they _are_ his deaths, if only in sensation).

“Damian,” Bruce warns, voice taut with frustration. Dick eyes them both carefully, sensing Damian’s responding irritation like a flare of ozone after a lightning strike.

“Murdered?” Damian asks, turning towards Dick and away from his father. “That’s what you were trying to stutter, correct?”

“ _Zucco_ ,” Dick spits, still glaring at Damian. His shakes have mostly subsided, the bits of his Dya and Dat’s pains and sensation leaking from him in small doses, steadily replaced by _him_. It’s a mixed thing, relief and ache, because he knows he’ll never feel them again, not their pain or their joy, but feeling their fall, their ruin…it’s too much for him to take, to _handle_. “He wants – _wanted_ – protection money… _ils ont été assassinés_. Il les a tués…”

Damian’s eyes soften infinitesimally, mouth corners crinkled slightly in the ghost of a frown.

“How do you know?”

“I heard him threaten Pop. I saw the wires snap…we checked them…we checked them _three_ times and they were _fine_.”

Damian nods, and says three words that Dick won’t yet know to mean as much as they do:

“I believe you.”

* * *

“ _He could be happy somewhere else. Anywhere else. I don’t want to drag any more children into this life, Damian. You should understand that better than anyone.”_

Damian clicks his tongue impatiently, arms crossed across his chest and not quite looking at his father.

“ _If you think for one second we wouldn’t have been on the streets on either side of the war without your influence, Father, you truly are as insipid as Nygma insists.”_

Bruce sighs, running gloved fingers through sweat-slicked hair.

“ _I shouldn’t have let you make that choice.”_

A huff masked as laughter, almost comfortable.

“ _It never was a choice. Not for Cassandra, not for Todd, not for Brown, and certainly not for myself. The mob has murdered his parents. His involvement will occur regardless of you, and entirely as Grayson wants. From Pennyworth’s recollections, I’m reminded of someone else we know._ _Do you recognize the echo of your broken shards in him, Father?_ ”

* * *

No one else cares. No one else believes him. Bruce’s warmth and Damian’s belief are replaced by skepticism, by cold separation, by indifference, and words like _a_ _ward of the state_ and _unfit home environment_. He’s dragged off to Juvie despite Pop’s protests, with a small plush Zitka and his parents’ wedding rings as the only reminders of life outside cement walls and barred windows.

Children are cruel, he finds, pressed in corners and boxes away from warmth and kindness. His gift is a burden here, as they quickly pick up because he can feel their pain and his mixed together. Dick can’t fight back without aching for it, bruises unpainted on his own skin but echoing on it all the same. They call him words he doesn’t entirely understand yet. Words he’s never really heard spoken, for all his mastery of languages. He hears the sounds register, understands the letters, but doesn’t quite grasp their meaning applied to him.

 _Gypsy_ he knows as a word for Romani, something meant to be hateful. He doesn’t understand the way it’s spit like a disease, like something wrong and dirty and evil.

No one speaks his name here, only _gypsy_ and _orphan_ and _boy_ , and he doesn’t respond to these, so he stops speaking. He remains silent because he finds no value in words in such a cold environment. He hides the rings under an ill-fitting jumpsuit, hides Zitka in a loose floorboard only he knows about, and he breathes. He bleeds. He accepts their vitriol and pain without offering any of his own to placate them.

Dick is still and silent, an unforgivable offense.

It takes a week for him to snap, a week of insults and implications and snarls that set his teeth on edge. It takes a week for them to find a weak point, to press enough for him to retaliate.

“ _Think they died to escape you?_ ” they hiss, like snakes around him, teasingly snapping their jaws as a weak intimidation tactic. “ _Do you think you were so much of a **freak** that they preferred death to you?_”

He doesn’t let his head snap back when the boy beneath his fist's does, but it’s a near thing. Dick’s fast enough to dodge the punch to his ribs, but the foot he puts on the boy’s solar plexus is heavy on him. The bruises he leaves on the few other boys that circle close enough burn on his skin, and the blood he draws when a hand covers his mouth bleeds a phantom trail down his own fingers.

“ ** _Freak_** _!_ ” they scream and shout, more afraid now, and Dick’s too busy holding his uninjured arm and willing them from his skin to care.

At night, alone in his cell and nursing those wounds that are internal more than external, he tries to recall his parents’ sensations ghosting over his skin like butterfly kisses, like pinpricks of needles, like lips warm on skin and soft with product. He tries to remember what they felt like as him, what he felt like as them, in pain or comfort or _anything_ , but they escape him like colored water wrung out of a sponge, leaving only remnants of the dye to mark that they had ever existed in it.

Blood paints his dreams though, and he can feel their death in his nightmares. He can feel his bones break, can feel himself fall. In happier fantasies, it’s Zucco Dick breaks as, his body making a canvas out of concrete. Typically, it’s his parents, Dya’s lips speaking his name and begging him to look away.

No matter the night, he never looks away. He always takes that pain in him and accepts it.

This is his burden.

* * *

“ _Has he spoken?_ ” Bruce asks, lips thinned, eyes narrowed on his friend.

Jim Gordon releases a weary sigh, frowning.

“ _He hasn’t spoken since you and Damian left the circus, funny enough. His last words…they were to the two of you._ ”

* * *

The GCPD finds nothing, a remorseful Jim Gordon tells him a month later. Dick’s eyes find the limp in his leg, the healing gunshot wound stinging his shoulder, and he aches for it. Dick nods, a quiet thing, jaw clenched and fists so tight his nails break skin. Still, he’s tied with Gordon’s sensations, between _him_ and himself, because he has no ground here. He’s in freefall, and it’s only a matter of time until he crashes.

“Dick?”

He nods once again, taking a shaky breath like it’s fire and feeling it burn the cavity where his lungs sit uselessly. The world tilts, shifting like tectonic plates beneath his feet until he’s off-balance. When he shuts his eyes, it burns around him, an unforgiving red – the color they’d painted the ground in the end, a stain on their bright green uniforms.

Gordon tries to put a hand on his shoulder, but Dick anticipates it and moves before he can think, a grip vice tight around Gordon’s wrist and something fearful and angry in Dick’s eyes. It takes a minute to register, to take in the slack-jawed surprise, almost daze, of the older man.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wants to say, but he isn’t all that sorry, and his tongue has long since ceased to voice his increasingly melancholic thoughts.

Dick says nothing, as he often does.

“Firm grip,” the cop tries to joke, but it falls flat as he sees the way the jumpsuit hangs off Dick, the black eye from a lucky hit. “Are you okay, here? Are you being treated well?”

He could say he isn’t, could repeat the poison everyone spits, could reference the myriad of wounds he’s collected like badges of honor. Dick could tell him how much it hurts to fight back, how much it hurts not to. He could say anything and everything, but he’s seen the efficiency of this system now. He’s seen the way they’d shrugged off a murder case when it had come wrapped in a pretty bow as an accident, the way they’d taken him from his only home and dropped him into a festering pit of hatred and anger and forgotten kids.

Dick inclines his head, briefly, but something in Gordon’s eyes says he knows it’s a lie.

* * *

“ _Are you sure?_ ”

Jason gives a half-grin, wild and windswept against the night sky. He looks carefree, like this. Like a normal twelve-year-old boy, instead of a sidekick in gold and black Kevlar going up against psychopaths twice his size and three times his age.

“ _Why the hell not, B-man? Afraid one more kid’ll drive you to solitary confinement in Arkham?_ ”

Bruce doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing.

“ _Are you going to be okay if I take in Dick? You won’t feel uncomfortable?”_

Jason shakes his head, dangling his legs over the city, and taking a deep breath. Bruce’s presence adds a sharp tang to the smokey air, one Jason’s long since associated with home.

“ _’Course not. Don’t be, what was the word your demon spawn used? Oh yeah, a_ simpleton _. Don’t be that._ ”

Bruce chuckles, ruffling Jason’s hair despite any squawks of protests he may or may not hear.

* * *

Bodies lie. Appearances lie.

Bruce Wayne’s home is a veneer of warmth draped over cavernous halls of abandonment and loneliness. There is a loudness to the silence, an echo Dick can’t understand but _feels_ all the same like a half-formed scab. Memories pick at it, peeling off any attempts at clotted protection, and it gives him far too much space to think. Remember. _Recall_.

The emptiness is suffocating until he realizes what Damian had meant by _another orphan_. They come in droves, curious and sleep-deprived with bags under their eyes and yawns tickling at his throat. Stephanie’s the first to approach him, loud and friendly in fuzzy purple pajamas and a slept-in ponytail. She reminds him a bit of Sasha the fire dancer, a breath of familiar air and bubbliness that’s almost infectious.

Stephanie pulls him into a hug before he knows what she’s doing, darting back up the stairs just as fast to drag her “other little brother” out of bed.

Jason’s nose is deep in the _Illiad_ when he does arrive, only offering Dick a small smile as acknowledgment before moving towards the kitchen.

Cass approaches him after everyone’s eaten, curious and friendly, if a bit hesitant. Her hand is warm when it sneaks under his shirt to press over his heart, eyes burrowing deep into his own like an astronomer mapping the stars.

“You’re like me,” she murmurs, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Welcome home.”

He smiles at her, hoping it conveys his thanks, and she knows well enough to leave it be.

Wayne Manor is a home of sorts after that initial greeting, with careful courtesies and measured words meant to placate him offered as needed. They don’t expect him to speak, not immediately, and go out of their way to make him feel as welcome as possible.

Cass teaches him sign language and ballet as ways to express himself without words, and Steph makes sure to drag him to her room to watch whatever new show she gets fixated on. Jason’s less present, but still kind. Steph tells him that Jason’s just a grumpy teenager too cool for his family, and Cass just says that he’s anxious around new people.

Dick doesn’t care either way; as much as he appreciates the Waynes for taking him in, he’s under no illusion for how long this new “home” will last. All that matters, all that he _can_ control is Zucco’s penance for his crimes. His _punishment_ that the GCPD had been unable and unwilling to deliver.

So he holds his silence. He dances and practices sign language with Cass, he watches shows with Steph, he doesn’t talk to Jason (or see him at all, really), and he avoids Bruce, which is surprisingly easy considering how present the man had been for the first few days. Another mystery, but another one that’s not Dick’s problem.

What _is_ Dick’s problem is easily remedied with a bit of acrobatics and a stable internet connection. Careful monitoring, a brief foray into hacking GCPD’s digital database (which, for how difficult it’s said to be, is pretty easy), and a distraction in the form of Cass’s ballet recital, and Dick has a plan.

He feigns sickness, stuffing pillows beneath his sheets like he’s curled up and sleeping, and jumps out the window of his room to a tree, practiced and precise. He laughs a bit as he lands, feeling the wind greet him as an old friend, entirely at peace with something familiar.

The Manor is twelve miles outside of downtown Gotham, but he has enough cash leftover from the allowance Bruce gives him weekly (see: all of it) to hail a cab when he gets closer. A written promise of a forty-dollar tip if he doesn’t ask questions has the cabbie blissfully silent, leaving Dick to stare at the palms of his hands and picture the scene that’s haunted him every night since their fall. The fantasy eluding his reality every minute Zucco lives.

_Can I do it?_

It’s a question he’s never asked. Dick’s never _needed_ to ask. He’s only nine years old, he’s lived a life full of joy and love and affection, not one of violence and darkness. He’s never had to think of death in any sense until his parents. Until he’d _felt_ it, _became_ it.

It’s stained him now, a metaphysical scar upon his soul. Something ugly and patched over with flimsy bandages. Something rotten, _corrupted_.

Yes, he decides, he can do it. He can throw his parents’ murderer into gravity’s domain, under her influence, and let physics take care of the rest. Dick doesn’t think he’ll regret it. No, he _knows_ he won’t regret it.

_Can I look?_

He looks every night, and he looks every time he shuts his eyes. It doesn’t matter that it will hurt, that he’ll feel every breaking bone and every rupturing organ because it’s _meant to_. It’s meant to hurt, meant to break, so it will.

_Can I live with it?_

There is no comparable experience he can draw information from, no preparations he can make. He doesn’t think it matters, though. Not much does now.

Dick Grayson had died with his parents, after all. He’s just a shadow of loss in a city full of it.

* * *

“ _He’s…different,”_ Damian says to Jon, eyes distant over the skyline. “ _Grayson, that is. He’s unlike any child I’ve interacted with._ ”

His boyfriend squeezes his hand, smile small and contained. Jon’s leg comes to lock around his, a comfort and a habit.

“ _How so?_ ”

Damian sighs, trying to think of a way to phrase it.

“ _He’s silent, as Cassandra was initially, but he’s still bright and kind._ ”

Jon laughs.

“ _No wonder you find that unusual, jr. sir broods-a-lot._ ”

Damian shakes his head.

“ _It’s not necessarily the_ kindness _or the smiles, it’s the manipulatory facet of it. He seems to present emotions as a way of distancing others from him, but with kindness rather than surliness._ ”

Jon cocks his head at him, teeth a blinding white as he flashes them.

“ _Aww does little Dickie remind you of you minus the whole murder thing?_ ”

Damian bumps Jon’s shoulder with his, huffing.

“ _Perhaps,_ ” he says carefully. “ _There are…similarities to be found. Father sees himself in Grayson too. A reflected loneliness, and the loss of his parents in tragic circumstances._ ”

“ _Not to mention the Wayne signature black hair blue eyes combo, with you and Steph as the only exceptions so far._ ”

Jon presses a kiss to Damian’s cheek at that, delighting in the red flush that follows it. Damian’s never really been good at handling affection, the League hadn’t been known for positive tactility and as much as his mother loves him, she’d never known how to alter that. And his father, of course, exists closer to touch aversion than starvation, so hugs had been an awkward and altogether unpleasant affair. Jon seems dead set on altering this with bursts of unrestrained affection that Damian has not yet found a reason to reject (not that he hasn’t been looking).

“ _Is he going to go on a vengeance quest too?_ ” Jon asks after a beat, giving Damian a second to collect himself.

Damian thinks of the way Grayson avoids eye contact, the way he dodges attempts at conversations beyond shallow pleasantries and inquiries on what he feels like eating. He thinks of the way Grayson spends hours upon hours on a borrowed laptop, holed up in his room and indifferent to life outside of that.

Zucco, the boy had spit, blue eyes alight with rage. Despite the combined pressure of Batman _and_ Nightwing, no ties had been found between Zucco and Haly, and nothing beyond a ten-year-old boy’s testimony placed him at the circus at all. The GCPD had already closed the Graysons’ case as an accident, and Haly had refused to name Zucco out of fear of retaliation.

Broken boys have a propensity towards violent retribution in Damian’s experience. He would know.

“ _Not a quest, so to speak. But I wouldn’t be surprised to discover vengeance as one of his central drives now._ ”

Jon’s sleek black mask lifts on one side, a raised brow.

“ _Are you going to stop him?_ ”

“ _That would be hypocritical_ ,” Damian retorts, thinking of Cain’s throat slick with blood, an old blade tied to the League posed accidentally in the room. His father had been suspicious, especially when Cassandra came into their care a few days later, but he’d had no proof. No reason to dig deeper, perhaps out of fear of alienating Damian. It had been a vengeance he’d taken. Not his own, but Cassandra’s, for she’d been too young to take it herself. “ _Wouldn’t it?_ ”

* * *

He doesn’t find Zucco on the first night, nearly getting caught by Steph on the way back in as he slithers up the branches and through the open window.

He doesn’t find Zucco on the second night, dodging thermometers and sentiments and care from _Bruce_ of all people, but no one discovers his absence, so he marks it as a win.

He _does_ narrow down Zucco’s location on the third night, accidentally overhearing chitter in a desolate alleyway he’d stumbled into by accident. _The Boss’ll want those weapons shipped to base_ , one says. _Zucco’s a hardass, but damn if he ain’t efficient_. The other replies.

Finding Zucco seems a lot more plausible after that, even if he ends up with two unconscious grown men on his hands rather than any further information on the base’s location. Even if his knuckles are scraped on their skin, his face their pain, his ribs bruised from him and them. Something about it is centering, separating, joined and independent pains.

It feels almost _natural_.

So of course, high on that victory, on a lead in a case he’s relentlessly pursued for _weeks_ now, he slips up. When he arrives back at the manor – a small shadow before a mausoleum restructured into a home – Jason’s sitting on his bed looking perfectly at ease.

The bed’s more than big enough for him, but Dick has so many pillows shoved between the four curtained posted of it that it seems smaller, cramped. Jason’s still in his Gotham Academy uniform with a hoodie on top, legs crossed and back relaxed into the makeshift pillow fort. It had been an attempt to make the bed more homey, leaving less room for shadows and memories to fester. Dick had scented it with roses and incense too, shallow attempts at recapturing a long-gone circus trailer shaped home.

“Dick,” he greets as Dick slips in, silent but still sensed. There’s a smirk pulling at his lips, light blue eyes warm with mirth. Dick’s heart drops, every trace of satisfaction leaving his system in a rush. “Sneaking out already? I didn’t make that a habit for a month or so. You don’t waste time, do you?”

Dick glares over him, hands on his hips and trying to pretend he’s taller than he is. Built like an acrobat, for better or worse, and Jason’s a beanpole that makes him feel small. Even with Jason sitting Dick still feels small.

 _What are you doing here?_ He signs slowly, careful to make sure each of his movements is precise. Cassandra signs as fast as she thinks, fluent as water, but Dick’s still learning. Even with his proficiency in learning languages, it’s sometimes difficult to piece together the different movements sequentially.

Jason cocks a brow at him, sinking back further into the pillow pile.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Dick feels a flicker of irritation and, despite never performing the gesture himself, wants to flip Jason off. He resists, and simply signs _not your business_.

“It’s not mine,” Jason concedes, “but it _is_ Bruce’s. I don’t think he’d be too happy to know you’re tracking down a murderer instead of sick in bed with a ‘fever’.”

_What do you want?_

Something in Jason’s eyes shifts, a harsher figment of the past. His eyes roam over the rolled-up sleeves of Jason’s red hoodie and beneath it, his pressed shirt, taking in the faded black crescents. Dick’s skin offers the answer to a question he hadn’t voiced – they’re cigarette burns – burning like nothing he can describe, painful enough to make his eyes water.

“Is it Zucco you’re looking for?”

Dick nods, willing Jason’s pain from his.

“What are you going to do when you find him?”

Dick takes his right hand and makes a peace sign, swiping it across the open palm of his left before slamming it back down like a hammer striking an anvil.

 _Fall_ , he signs.

Jason looks confused, pushing off the bed to stand in front of him. This close, Dick can make out flecks of gold and green in Jason’s blue eyes. It’s…weird.

“You or him?”

Dick shrugs, because he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care, and it doesn’t matter. Not that he’ll tell Jason any of that. He can’t trust him, can’t trust anyone who might stop him. Might get in his way.

Zucco. Dick. Both. One will fall, or both will, and it won’t make a lick of difference.

Jason frowns, hand warm where it presses against Dick’s forehead.

“You’re freezing,” he says softly, like he’s only just noticed the fact that Dick’s dripping rainwater all over the expensive hardwood flooring.

 _I’m fine_ , Dick signs.

Jason rolls his eyes, shrugging off the red hoodie he’s wearing and shoving it over Dick’s head with a muttered, “fuck curse jars, what this family really needs is an _I’m fine_ jar _._ ”

Dick swims in the red cotton fabric of the hoodie, feeling warm and swaddled and off-balance in front of Jason’s concern. It’s…strange, to say the least. The older boy hadn’t shown any real interest in him during the two weeks he’s been here, and then he manages to stumble upon Dick’s absence and offers him a sweater because Dick’s _cold_?

His cheeks flush for a reason entirely beyond him, and he’s confused by everything about this situation.

 _Why?_ He asks.

Jason rolls his eyes.

“Because that’s what family’s for, Dickiebird. Better get used to it. If you don’t want me to tell Bruce, you have to promise you’ll be more careful and won’t get hurt.”

 _I promise_ , Dick lies, because he knows it will hurt and accepts it. _Relishes_ in it.

Jason, however, remains oblivious of that and takes Dick at his word.

“Keep the hoodie,” he says gently, stepping back. “You need it more than I do.”

Before he manages to leave, Dick stops him with a hand on his arm.

 _Why Dick-bird?_ He asks.

“ _Why Dickiebird_?” Jason quotes.

Dick nods shyly, and Jason steps close enough to ruffle his hair with a devilish grin.

“Because you remind me of a bird up on those bars Bruce had installed. You practically fly through the air.”

* * *

“ _Because when I see you up there, Richard, you make me think of a little robin._ ”

* * *

He finds Zucco on the sixth night; the four-month anniversary of the grounding of the Flying Graysons.

Unfortunately, Batman finds them before Dick can make a move, before he can take his revenge and _end it_ how it shouldn’t have started in the first place. He melts out of the shadows silently, lips curved in a frown, mask creased around his brow.

When he makes eye contact with Dick, he shifts, and there’s something in the _way_ he shifts that Dick recognizes. A motion he knows all too well.

 _Bruce,_ he mouths, and the gleaming white eyes of that dark cowl give way to warm ocean blues in his mind, effortlessly combining the _bat_ with the _man_. It fits, he thinks, mind quickly shifting other pieces into place, other rumored vigilantes in Gotham only seen alongside the Batman. Cassandra, with her swift grace and undercurrent of lethality showcased in her dancing. Stephanie, with her bruises and shifty eyes, seemingly always hiding something ( _small things_ , Dick had always dismissed them as). Damian, tall and broad and strong. Dick’s seen pictures of Nightwing before, online. Damian looks exactly like Nightwing.

Disappearances, strange injuries…

It all fits.

“Dick,” Bruce says in his patented _please calm down, Alfred isn’t here right now_ voice. “You don’t have to do this. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

Dick moves closer, a bitter laugh breaking free from his throat. Pretty placations and empty words. Same things the GCPD had offered.

“Doesn’t it?” Dick demands in a raspy voice, sore from disuse.

Bruce shifts slightly, entirely too sympathetic. His hand is heavy on his shoulder, exactly as it had been on that blood-soaked night so long ago. It doesn’t bring him comfort, now. Zucco’s continued existence has burned away that possibility and all others, leaving nothing but pain.

“This won’t bring them back. It won’t take that pain away. It won’t fix things.”

Dick doesn’t so much snap as explode, feeling like a stick of dynamite with a fuse that's been burning since their deaths, since their fall, since Pop had left and the cops had failed and he had lost everything.

“He killed my _family_!” He screams, right up in Bruce Wayne’s stupid face. He doesn’t _care_ if he’s the Batman, he doesn’t _care_ if Bruce thinks it’s wrong to kill. Dick’s lost his family, lost his home, and it’s all Zucco’s fault.

They hate him, here. He doesn’t belong, doesn’t fit in, not with his gold-tanned skin and unusual roots. Not when he’s _Roma_ , and here that means something less and more than heritage. Even his new “home” can’t change that, for all he’s sure Bruce means it to, for all Cass and Steph are convinced it will.

His life had ended when their pain left his body, when their hearts faded into nothingness. All he is now is a vengeful spirit ready to balance the scales, no matter the cost.

“I have _nothing left_! I have _no one_ left! And I won’t rest until he knows that _pain_! Until he knows what it’s like to _suffer_!”

But Bruce doesn’t let go of him, still frowning, still tense. Zucco’s dark eyes are wide, fearful, and his face’s painted with the blood from a broken nose. Dick’s aching for more than that. He wants his pound of flesh, wants Zucco to _look_ how he _feels_ – broken, shattered, ruined, hollow – like his parent’s corpses had ended up on the cold hard floor of the circus tent, with no net to catch them. He wants to feel it again, as painful as that might be. Dick wants Zucco to feel it, and he wants to feel it too.

A punishment. An offering. A sacrifice.

He doesn’t care anymore; he hadn’t bothered with a _Mulengi dori_ or prayer. Dick has his anger, and that’s enough. That _will_ be enough.

Dick snarls at Zucco, clawing at Bruce’s grip on his arm and kicking at his legs. He killed them, after all. He'd killed Dick’s family. He'd ripped Dick’s home apart. He'd ruined Dick’s life, so Dick has to ruin his. He can’t let Bruce send him back in the Juvenile Detention Center, not when it had taken him weeks to sneak out of the Manor, not when the Detention Center will be harder to sneak out of, not when it had taken forever to find Zucco again without the files he’d stolen from the GCPD and lost in a bad scuffle or five.

“Dick,” Bruce tries, but Dick takes the opportunity to swing his leg upwards, striking Bruce’s cheek with a satisfying smack. He doesn’t let it affect him, doesn’t let it through the mental barriers he’s been practicing in his spare time. It still seeps through a little bit, feather-light and tingling rather than the bruising impact it would feel like otherwise. The grip on his arm weakens, and he drops into a crouch, lightning fast as he sweeps Batman’s legs. He goes down like a sack of bricks, and Dick launches himself at Zucco without hesitation, incandescent with rage.

“ _Dick_!”

Zucco’s heavy, and strong, but he’s not used to fighting, not used to dealing with things personally. Dick can tell with every hesitation, every misstep as he throws everything he has into every strike, every blow bringing Zucco closer and closer to the edge. Dick lowers his barriers, lets himself feel every deliverance in his own skin, lets their bruises be shared. Zucco looks human, this close. Not the monster Dick bleeds out every night in his dreams, not the cold smile he’d imagined as his parents had fallen. He looks…scared.

Dick grips the fancy suit jacket tightly, feeling Zucco’s tremors build in his chest with one foot already off the ledge.

“You killed them,” he murmurs, “didn’t you?”

Zucco shakes his head, trembling against Dick’s fingertips.

“Don’t _lie_ ,” he spits, watching the flickering mud-brown eyes refuse to settle on the cold frost of Dick’s face, watching the way his fingers twitch. _Liar_ , he thinks. **_Liar_** _. “_ I can _see_ you lie.”

“It was just _business_ , kid. Ain’t nothing personal."

 _Truth_ , he reads in the rabbit-like thrum of Zucco’s pulse, and that’s almost worse than a lie.

“This,” Dick says, feeling pain cryopreserved in his veins like shards of ice, sharp and cutting against his heart, against his lungs, in his throat, “is personal.”

Dick moves closer to the ledge as though in a trance, half steps measures to a tragic melody only he hears. Zucco’s blubbering now, oily skin slick with sweat and rain and a bitter note of fear effusing through his pores.

Closer still, and Dick can see the lights of Gotham, the false beams of hope dull amongst all the smoke and shadows. All the tragedy. He looks down at the ground and sees two angels drowning in twin halos of crimson.

“Dick,” a voice says, shaking him out of the reverie, back to reality. It’s not Bruce this time, it’s Jason. It’s Jason’s glinting eyes, hiding behind the white cloth of a mask. Jason looking at him carefully, smiling at the rain-soaked red hoodie he’d given Dick, uncaring of Zucco’s fate. “Are you okay?”

It is, perhaps, the dumbest question anyone’s ever asked him.

It makes him laugh, and he’s so caught off-guard he doesn’t know the precise moment that laughter shifts into dry sobs, tears blurring his vision along with the rain.

“He killed them,” he says with a trembling lip, arms the only steady thing in a soaked world of unsteady things. “He killed them for money. _D'affaires_ , il a dit.”

“I didn’t ask about him,” Jason says gently. “Couldn’t give a shit, to be frank.”

“How can I be okay?” Dick whispers. “How can I be anything but broken? He’s the reason I’m an _orphan_.”

And oh, how he hates that term. How he hates the way it’s released in pity, in false warmth and lies and before promises of _someday_ and _eventually_ and _healing_ that can’t possibly happen.

“Will this make you feel better?” Jason asks.

Dick tightens his grip on Zucco, focusing in on the fear, the way Zucco reeks of it. He feels hollow, skin trembling from the rain and the grief and Zucco, borrowed pain not as satisfactory as it should be.

“Nothing else has. Nothing else will.”

Jason steps closer.

“Have you tried letting it?”

Dick looks at the ground once more, several stories down. He feels Bruce’s eyes on him, Jason’s eyes on him. Concerned. Everyone’s always _concerned_.

“I have nothing left.”

“Don’t you?” Jason questions gently.

Cassandra. Stephanie. Damian. Alfred. Bruce. Jason.

Dick had been so consumed by the loss of his family; he hadn’t realized he’d stumbled his way into a new one.

“You’ll send me back,” he says, trembling in his skin and Zucco’s. “I know you will.”

“We won’t,” Bruce voices, stepping beside Jason. “We never will.”

When Bruce tries to take Zucco back, Dick lets him. And when Jason pulls him into his arms, he lets him.

For the first time since his parents’ funeral, Dick lets himself cry.  
  


* * *

“ _You’ve been spending a lot of time with Dick, Cass. What do you think?_ ”

Cass smiles up at Jason from her place on the yoga mat, body relaxing from its previously maintained lotus position. Meditation had become a safe-haven for her after everything, a way to escape the words bodies speak and the violence her father had made her feel. For the most part, she’s healed from it, but she still enjoys the reprieve for what it is. Her thoughts. Her body. Her words.

No intrusions. 

She hasn't yet found a way to get Dick to sit down and try it. His hyperfocus on Zucco has been replaced by hyperactivity none of them have ever dealt with. Just last week Damian had yelled himself hoarse trying to get Dick off the chandelier, paler than any of them had ever seen outside of life or death situations. Dick, of course, had found no issue with the repurposing of a 'fancy light thing rich people have too many of' as a swing, but he'd offered Damian a hug as an apology the older had been too surprised to escape.

The memory fills her with warmth.

“ _I like him. I always wanted another little brother._ ”

Jason rolls his eyes.

“ _I’m older than you, Cassie._ ”

She boops his nose, delighting in the way it crinkles.

“ _That’s what_ you _think Jay._ ”

Jason sighs, taking a spot next to her and mimicking her position. She corrects him immediately, hand pressing against his sine until he straightens, turning his hands over until they’re positioned to her satisfaction. His eyes flutter shut until all he hears is their shared exhales, measured and relaxed.

They both indulge in the silence for a moment before Jason breaks it.

“ _Do you think he’s…okay, after everything with Zucco?_ ”

Cass frowns, cracking an eye open to watch her brother carefully. Despite Dick’s returned vocalization of his thoughts and wants, he has yet to truly _communicate_ any of his hurt. He holds it close to heart, burrowing it so deep that even she has trouble seeing it, reading it. His almost subconscious misdirections don’t help matters, especially when Dick seems to have practice holding the illusion of smiles and contentment for long periods of time.

“ _I think,_ ” Cass says carefully, weighing her words in the beat before she utters them, “ _that he’s…hurt. Deeply hurt. And I think we’re helping him with that. I think he’s like me. I think he knows the words, but I don’t think he knows how to use them._ ”

Jason frowns, peering at her through the curtains of bangs Alfred hasn’t yet managed to cut. It’s been the source of many polite arguments between the two of them that Cass had accidentally overheard. The fact that Alfred hadn’t snuck in to cut them in Jason’s sleep is further proof of Steph’s theory that Jason is Alfred’s favorite.

“ _Family trait,_ ” Jason drawls, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “ _Now, remind me how to meditate again? I’m almost as bad as Steph at it._ ”

Cass grins, and walks him through it happily.

* * *

The confrontation with Zucco had done more for Dick than he’d realized at the time, offering him a sense of closure and the ability to separate himself from his parents in a way he hadn’t since their deaths. Without their imagined spirits haunting him, he finally had the chance to see his new life for what it is – _life_ , not the purgatory he’d imagined it to be, or the Hell he’d thought of it as before coming to Wayne Manor, just _life_. And life, for him, begins with a rebirth.

Despite training in acrobatics and various other circus-esque disciplines since birth (most notably fire-eating, knife throwing, stilt walking, and escaping from straight jackets in various circumstances) apparently knowing the Dark Knight’s identity isn’t a free-pass into becoming a vigilante.

It requires, as Steph had so delicately put it when Alfred hadn’t been listening in, getting your ass kicked until you can kick ass. And between Cass, Damian, Bruce, and Jason, Dick…

Dick is definitely not feeling turbed.

“Get it? Turbed?” Dick huffs, an arm over his ribs. It only kind of hurts to breathe, and he _knows_ Damian is going easy on him, which is almost as frustrating as the ache of the one-hit he’d managed to get on Damian (the first hit so far). Damian, as always, doesn’t notice it. Merely raising an unimpressed brow.

“ _Tt_. That’s not a real word.”

“Technically,” Dick counters, flipping to his feet fast as he can and attempting a surprise sweep to Damian’s legs. Damian jumps over it with a smirk, delivering a softened roundhouse to Dick’s inner thigh. Again. Man is that going to hurt tomorrow. “All words aren’t real words. We just made them up.”

Damian wrinkles his nose.

“But _turbed_?”

“Opposite of _dis_ turbed. Like aster.”

“Need I ask?”

Dick grins, eyes tracked on Damian’s right leg. He’d noticed a few weeks ago that Damian’s one real tell is his right foot. Said foot twitches before Damian moves, shifting in the direction opposite of where he plans to go.

Not that the knowledge has helped him avoid getting his butt thoroughly whooped. But maybe…

“Opposite,” Dick begins, watching Damian’s foot shift to the left. “of _dis_ aster.”

And then, when Damian goes right, Dick goes left, darting behind Damian’s back. In the breath before Damian turns, Dick strikes both the _popliteals_ (or, as he likes to call them, the knee pits) of Damian’s legs and watches him fall to his knees.

“ _Now_ ,” Dick says with a grin, “I’m feeling the aster.”

Dick’s eyes dart over towards the Batcomputer, hoping Jason saw the move, before remembering that he’s on a stakeout with Bruce tonight. Dick pouts.

Damian takes advantage of the split-second distraction to sweep his legs and pin him, clicking his tongue as he often does.

“Distractions are not becoming of a warrior, Grayson.”

“And yet, you still fell for one.”

Damian scowls.

“Momentary irritation. Won’t happen again, _believe_ me.”

“Someone’s whelmed,” Dick drawls, and Damian’s eyes harden in response.

“We shall spar until your tongue is as tired as the rest of your body,” he says instead of responding, and Dick merely sighs.

So much for acrobatics tomorrow.

* * *

“ _Do you think he’s ready, Master Bruce?_ ” Alfred asks, watching his long-time charge carefully.

Bruce sighs, replaying the training footage for the tenth time that night, tracking every mistake, every area he can possibly work to improve Dick’s style. Dick had flourished under the criteria placed, breezing through every physical aspect of training thrown at him and acing every subject Bruce had him study. It’s been nearly a year since Dick lost his parents, almost nine months since they’d taken him in, and for the last month or two, he’s simply been delaying the inevitable.

“ _I think he’s been ready since he didn’t kill Zucco,”_ Bruce answers, watching Dick fall back into a handspring and strike Cassandra hard in her abdomen, the only area she tends to leave open. Dick had discovered her talent for reading tells as one of the few weaknesses she possesses and has poured his energy into obscuring his movements as much as possible ever since. “ _He’s just…so young. They all are._ ”

“ _No one is ever truly ready for greatness, Master Bruce. Master Dick will grow and mature as you have, although I do hope for his sake, he’s more sociable._ ”

Alfred pairs the jab with a scrutinizing look at Bruce’s phone, and the open conversation with Selina.

“ _I’m plenty sociable,_ ” Bruce mutters. “ _Besides, it’s not my fault Joker’s the jealous type._ ”

“ _And yet,_ ” Alfred says, “ _he still manages to maintain a long-term romantic relationship on the side._ ”

“ _Are you saying the_ Joker _is more sociable than me?_ ”

“ _I don’t have to, sir,_ ” Alfred retorts. “ _You just said it for me._ ”

Bruce sighs again, stretching his arms above his head and hearing several things pop. Things that, perhaps, are not meant to pop. Too bad Bane didn’t get the message.

“ _I’ll invite Selina out to the gala this weekend. Satisfied?_ ”

“ _Not entirely, but it’ll do for the moment. Now, Master Dick?_ ”

Bruce clicks out of the footage.

“ _I think he’s ready, and I think he knows it. He just needs to pick a name._ ”

“ _A rebirth,_ ” Alfred says. “ _I’m certain he’ll be ecstatic. So long as it doesn’t come with a bat-prefix I am more than willing to aid him in designing a costume._ ”

“ _Sick of bat-gear?_ ” Bruce asks with a half-smile, brow raised.

Alfred snorts.

“Bat _man_ , Bat _mobile_ , Bat _computer_ , Bat _chair_ , Bat _arangs_. _One has to draw a line somewhere, Master Bruce._ ”

Bruce laughs.

“ _Dick’s the one who started adding Bat in front of everything. Before, we just called the computer computer._ ”

“ _I have several recordings that would argue otherwise, Master Bruce. Your mumbling, after all, can be captured on Batspeakers._ ”

“ _No proof,_ ” Bruce mutters.

“ _Of course not, sir. Would you like your special_ Bat _coffee with tonight’s vigil, or would some_ Bat _cookies suffice?_ ”

Bruce, a long-standing sufferer of Alfred’s wit, merely groans tiredly and politely requests both.

* * *

Dick’s hard work pays off bit by bit. He takes the ashes of who he was and presses them into diamonds; durable, strong, and _not_ broken. He works on his unconscious reflections of pain around him, learns to control it. Reduce it. Work past it. Bits still slip past as they probably always will, but it’s a controlled flow. A _manageable_ one. Not overwhelming. Not the weight of the sky.

He picks out a name that fits his rebirth – Robin – for it is a reminder of the past and the promise of the future. It’s a promise to his parents, and a promise to his new family. To protect. To prevent. To not let there be more kids like him. More innocent people hurt.

He designs a costume in their colors – green and gold saturated in red – and his new family’s – black on black – with Alfred’s help. He trains as hard as he’s capable of, pushing himself harder with every goal he meets. Demanding more and more in a way no one else will.

And when the one-year anniversary of his parents’ death rolls around, he finds hope in it. He finds renewal, and rebirth. The same season, but a different Dick Grayson.

They’re not gone entirely, after all. They live on in him. They live on in the sprinkles of rain bringing forth flowers, in the twinkle of stars above him at night. They live on in the air with him when he flies through it, a dance they’d taught him.

Jason’s teasing grin pulls him out of his head, gloved fingers pinching his cheeks.

“Ready, Robin?” he asks.

Dick closes his eyes, taking in the nighttime air, the quiet hum to the city in the darkness. He doesn’t think of crimson halos and broken bones. He doesn’t think of lost echoes of pain sewed in his skin and theirs. He doesn’t think of what he’s lost.

Instead, he thinks of what he’s gained.

Robin opens his eyes.

“Ready, Vulcan.”

Together, they fly.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations, in order:  
> (1) " _my lólodúianchír_ " is romani for "my robin." [Source](https://www.freelang.net/online/romani.php?lg=gb)  
> (2) " _Il n’y a pas plus sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre."_ is a french proverb that means "no one is as deaf as the one who does not want to listen." [Source](https://www.languagenext.com/blog/french-proverbs/) (#20)  
> (3) _ils ont été assassinés_ , (4) _Il les a tués_ , and (5) _D'affaires, il a dit_ are french for "they were murdered", "he killed them", and "business, he said" respectively. [Source](https://www.translate.com/english-french)  
> (6) _Mulengi dori_ is a sort of protective rite called a dead man’s string that calls upon spirits for protection. It’s Romani in origin.
> 
> Verse notes:  
> (1) Ages are as follows: Dick = 9, Cass = 11, Jay = 12, Steph = 14, Damian = 22, Bruce = not my problem, and Alfred = immortal.  
> (2) Damian pops up on Bruce's radar at age ten and is still totally down to clown when it comes to murder, but he resists for the sole sake of maintaining the peace unless there are big reasons why he thinks he should ignore Bruce like he's an advertisement on TV (aka David Cain being an abusive piece of garbage and him being attached to fellow murder babe Cass). Cassandra was adopted at age 8 after being sent to fight/murder them on her father's orders. She failed, and when Damian found out her living circumstances, he...altered them. She doesn't become a vigilante until after Jason comes into the picture, and she goes by the moniker Batgirl until Steph is absorbed into the Wayne family. Jason is taken in at age 10 after trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile, as in canon, and he goes by Vulcan when he gets to be B's partner after a bunch of training. Steph is fostered at age 13 after she discovers her father is a criminal not-mastermind and takes it personally, doing the whole Spoiler thing. Cass eventually gives her the Batgirl moniker and takes up a new one -- Black Bat ofc.  
> (3) Dick is Romani and speaks French because his mother is French. He's not fluent in romani, but he knows bits and pieces from his mother.  
> (4) The kid partners aren't at all public and largely just rumors that none of the villains and minions really confirm because children kicking their ass isn't helpful for their bad guy reps. Nightwing and Flamebird (aka Dami and Jon) are more public because Jon has no concept of stealth and Damian has, for the most part, given up on trying to teach him. Batman is well known because of the League, but he's not very public-image-friendly. Titans and YJ do not exist, and there aren't really any superhero teams for kids/non-adults. Some other kid partners may or may not exist *shifty eyes* but they don't interact much and aren't big on public appearances either.  
> (5) Donna Troy will make an appearance in this universe or I will give away all my organs and you can fucking quote me on that.
> 
> Additional info:  
> (1) Mirror-touch synesthesia is a legit condition that is very non-specific in how it works so I took liberties and you can't sue me for them.  
> (2) Dick has selective mutism, which is a fancy way of saying bastard boy doesn't want to talk to anyone because he's plotting murder. Cassandra's muteness was very much not selective, and is entirely different, but there are similarities that can be drawn. I really love Dick & Cass bonding, so I wanted that to be another similarity.


End file.
